Helping Behavior in Puerto Rico

                                                 

            In the book Down on the Island, Jim Cooper talks about Puerto Rican culture through the eyes of professor teaching students in the Colegio de Mayagüez.   In his chapter Helping he references a specific phenomenon the culture in Puerto Rico that continues to be a debated topic everywhere.  Cooper brings up his concern that cheating was done in Puerto Rico in an open and public way, more than he had ever seen. He states the difference of how cheating is seen in the States and how it is thought of here on the island.  He brings up the whole situation that since early stages of the development, teachers are encouraging their students to help each other, making it seem like a good and valid action.  He also points that the whole system “approves” of the cheating behavior since the behavioral model that is seen between students is a cooperative one rather than a competitive one.  The whole helping others idea is spread through the Puerto Rican culture impacting the preparation with which students got to college and it reflected in the teaching and learning of the English language on the island. 

            Reading this essay by Jim Cooper made me want to situate myself and my opinion in this debate.  It is true that Puerto Ricans exhibit a cooperative behavior most of the time, but it doesn’t mean that it shows up only on the academic aspect.  I don’t believe that we Puerto Ricans cooperate academically more than other cultures for no reason.  For example, most of the teaching done in our schools just focuses on specific tests that are coming up and not really on the learning experience.  I personally do not believe that tests (including standardized ones) reflect the true enrichment that a student is having academically, because it forces the learning process.  Students are pushed to memorize large quantities of material and the true learning process is lost; that is when cheating comes up. Even though I do not sponsor cheating on tests, I do believe that cooperative teaching and learning is the correct path to go through.  This means that the learning process should be based on students helping other students for ideas to be transmitted in clearer and more familiar ways.  In contrast to the cooperative model, there’s the competitive model of behavior.  Sadly, the organization of the educational process of our nation forces each one of us to become part of the competition in order to achieve what we want. 

            While it is true that the cooperative model is not correct in all aspects of our life, it is also true that the competitive model can also represent a threat to our integrity. Being in a competition towards a specific goal can make us blind and lead ourselves to step on others no matter how bad it could hurt them.  It is at this time that, no matter how good we could become due to competition, our basic human values become destroyed and therefore competition has destroyed ourselves.